I'm not sure if anyone else had issues with the pdf, but when I rotated it so it was right side up, the columns didn't seem to line up. For example when I got to the end of a left column, naturally I would go to the top of the right column to continue reading like you would reading a book, but the content didn't pick up there and it didn't pick up directly below on the next page either, it seemed to just be scrambled throughout the document.
Ok, enough of that, on to the content. To be honest, I found the first reading to be fairly confusing. I just recently switched to the DTC major from engineering so I don't have a whole lot of experience with these types of ideas yet. I'm used to this + that = answer, end of discussion. What I got out of this was that rhetoric has been defined and redefined many, many times over the years. It seems that there is no real, set in stone definition even at this point, but according to Foss, Foss, and Trapp, “rhetoric is the human use of symbols to communicate” (2). I don’t think they necessarily just mean visual symbols, but more like symbolism, or what traits we relate to something when we think or talk about it. They talked about the labels we give things or people and how they can be viewed in different ways, for example they say “A move to a new state can be a struggle or an adventure…” (Foss, Foss, and Trapp 3). The selection then goes on to talk about how different people have defined rhetoric over the last few hundred years, each of them having a different take on the term and a different use for it.
As for the second question, I may be completely off here but this is the first thing that came to mind. My passion is for cars, I have been obsessed with them for as long as I can remember. As a result of this, I spend time online on different automotive forums getting ideas for my own projects and just seeing what everyone else out there has. The reason I think this relates to the subject at hand is because our cars can be a symbol of our status, at least in some cases. For example, when we see someone in a brand new Bentley or something of the sort we usually think they must be someone important, whereas when we see someone in a rusted old pinto we think ghetto. On these forums often times people will post pictures of their cars and what they have done to them as far as modifications go. In some cases they could just be simply posting this to help give others ideas of what works good and what doesn’t, but in other cases it is a chance for them to show off, basically saying “Hey, look at me, I’m cool”. Either way, we see these status symbols and register that as, if I want to be important, cool, wealthy, etc. I need to have that. Therefore using these symbols, these people have persuaded us to be like them in order to share that status. Again I could be completely off base here, but that’s what came to mind.
Foss, Sonja K., Karen A. Foss, and Robert Trapp. "Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric." N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Aug 2010. http://www.paulmuhlhauser.org/475/Readings/FossFossTrapp1.pdf
